Good morning. Now that December is in full swing, and you are feeling the pinch after splurging for that viral advent calendar, here’s some news to distract you from all your impulse purchases:
1. Ecommerce sales for Black Friday increased 8.5% YoY while retail sales only grew by 1.1% (Source: Mastercard’s SpendingPulse)
2. We talk about why advent calendars are so popular (and how it helps your UGC holiday strategy) 🎁
3. Is CPC the most important metric in ad campaigns?
4. Sam Altman’s sudden firing is still a mystery although some are stating his investment with Rain AI caused internal friction with the previous board.
Let’s dive in: 👇
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It’s December which means you’re about to see a lot of advent calendar unboxings on your feed.
Counting down to Christmas is all part of the holiday fun, and ecommerce brands can help customers get into the festive mood by putting together a sampler set of products with some pretty spectacular packaging. 👌
Not only are advent calendars a great way to surprise and delight your customers with mini or full-size versions of your product, but it’s also a good opportunity to push slow-moving stock (aka products that you want to get rid of before EOY) plus increase your AOV.
What makes advent calendars so attractive to consumers?
⚠️ One caveat though… just make sure the advent calendar’s price tag is worth it.
Chanel made headlines in 2021 for launching a $825 advent calendar that included items like stickers and a dustbag which led customers to complain on social media.
The takeaway? Don't put out a calendar that doesn't justify the steep price tag.
You can find advent calendars for different types of product categories ranging from toys, instant ramen, and beauty products.
Here are a few of our favorites trending advent calendars:
🧸 Lego Advent calendars
💅 Vogue’s Festive Calendar
🍜 Buldak’s Instant Ramen Advent Calendar (sadly only available for food influencers)
💄 Sephora Favorites Advent Calendar
For price-conscious customers, you can also offer a lower-tier option. Rather than counting down to 25 days, your brand can create a 12 day calendar.
Advent calendar unboxings are all over the feed during December. If you wow customers with your packaging, products, and value, it can lead to a huge growth in sales to cap off the end of the year. 🎄 📈
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DTC Twitter (X) was set ablaze this weekend with keyboard warriors coming out of the woodwork to share their hot takes on the importance of CPC in your Meta Ad campaigns. The tweet that started it all:
How important is the CPC metric in your ad campaigns?
Zach Stuck argues that CPCs are important and directly affect the cost of acquisition since as the cost of traffic increases, the conversion rate needs to increase with it to maintain the same cost per acquisition (CPA). However, this is hard to achieve when scaling campaigns.
It didn’t take long for Barry Hott to respond, citing that in the modern landscape, most performance campaigns optimize for conversions, not clicks.
Impressions from users in sessions that are deemed “more valuable” will be more in demand, and higher priced, so clicks from these impressions will also be more expensive (while converting at a higher rate).
Ash from Obvi explains: “I have an ad with a $1 CPC converting at 3%.
I also have an ad with a $4 CPC converting at 7%.S ame landing page.
Don't optimize for CPC, optimize for business outcomes.”
Rogue ex-Google, Ben Kruger then chose violence, with his devastating clown meme, backed up by screenshots that indicated that CPC does not have a lot to do with his CPA.
Barry argues that, instead, your goal as an advertiser should be to get the lowest cost conversion (or highest ROAS/MER, not cheaper impressions or clicks)
And while CPC should not be ignored, it’s not the most important indicator of ad performance. More impressions do not always lead to more clicks and more conversions.
Other users chimed in on the importance of CPC versus ROAS (return on ad spend) when creating and managing campaigns.
At Pilothouse, CTR or Click Through Rate, is used as an early indicator when we run “Pilot Tests” — our graduated testing process that considers multiple performance signals to find winning ad elements in alignment with business objectives as the test advance.
CPC is one of many metrics that you can be looking at when evaluating delivery patterns and looking for potentials to scale.
Which brings us to the question: Should you optimize your campaigns based on CPC?
Our short answer is no, but to say that CPC’s “don’t matter” is probably overstating it, but most users who chimed in on this very heated thread indicated that CPCs “don’t correlate” to performance, and DTC business should focus more on business outcomes rather than the intricacies of Meta’s Ad algorithm.
The clown show on X this weekend was in full effect, but it was all in good fun, and a reminder of how lucky we are to be in a community that shares and cares so much.
Ultimately, the job of a clown is the same as an ad: To get attention. Mission accomplished!
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DTC Newsletter is written by Rebecca Knight, Frances Du, and Michael Venditti. Edited by Eric Dyck.
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